You don’t need to be a hard-core birdwatcher to enjoy this quiz. Answers are at the end. If we catch you peeking, we’ll make you write on the whiteboard 100 times: “The title of Havilah Babcock’s book ‘Jaybirds Go to Hell on Friday’ was inspired by a Negro folk tale.”

South Carolina ETV’s new documentary “Roots in the River: The Story of Congaree National Park” will be aired in association with Ken Burns’ six-part documentary on America's national parks. A sneak preview of clips from both documentaries will be screened for the general public at the Congaree National Park visitor center on Sunday, September 20.

This entry in the National Park Foundation's "Your Parks Video Challenge" has Kelly leading us on a tour of Congaree National Park. And it has a pretty dang good soundtrack, if you like bluegrass!

We haven’t had a potpourri quiz since March, so here’s another batch of category leftovers and hard-to fit questions. Hope you find ‘em interesting. Answers are at the end. If we catch you peeking, we’ll just look the other way. Everybody deserves a free pass now and then.

Thousands of birding enthusiasts will be out and about to enjoy International Dawn Chorus Day this Sunday, May 3. Early risers have a special Dawn Chorus treat in store for them at South Carolina’s Congaree National Park.

The spectacular old-growth forest of the Congaree floodplain would have been lost forever had it not been for a grassroots campaign that achieved a highly implausible victory back in the 1970s. Veterans of the campaign gathered at Congaree National Park this past weekend to share memories of that long-ago struggle.

George W. Bush’s national park legacy includes seven new NPS units, five redesignations, one deauthorization, and one oddity.

When you work the visitor center’s information desk on a slow day, you can strike up conversations with walk-ins. Visitors will often tell you interesting things about themselves. And once in a while they will positively astound you.

This week’s quiz focuses on troubled species. Answers are at the end. If we catch you peeking, we’ll make you write “Encountering a four-meter Crocodylus acutus can cause severe de-puckering of the anal sphincter” 100 times on the whiteboard.

In an action unusual for its time, timber tycoon and early conservationist Francis Beidler put his vast holdings of South Carolina forestland in timber reserve status in the early 1900s. Six decades later, Congaree Swamp National Monument, now Congaree National Park, was created from the remnants. The park celebrates its 32nd birthday today, October 18.

You’ll love what they see at the national park entrance gates on Saturday, September 27. It’s the 15th annual National Public Lands Day, and all parks will be waiving their admission fees. It’d be nice if you volunteered to help with the site restoration and cleanup efforts planned for that day.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund was signed into law on September 3, 1964, took effect on January 1, 1965, and has since provided $4 billion to buy national park land and easements. That’s not nearly enough. The National Park Service’s acquisitions backlog has grown to $1.9 billion, and it’s getting bigger every year.

The Congaree River is flooding again, and as far as Congaree National Park is concerned, that’s a good thing. Periodic flooding is the very lifeblood of the extraordinary river bottom forest that the park preserves.

Though a veritable youngster in the national park realm, Congaree National Park is a vegetative museum, harboring some of the eastern United States' tallest trees in what's said to be the largest old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in the country.